[scrapping scrapping]

Some xmas cards for the LSS - nothing like xmas cheer to bring on a holiday mood!
More scrappy stuff:
i love the kaiser chipboard mini albums, and i've been busy embellishing the round ones :)

my mum has been  complaining that all my scrap pages are of G, so here are a few more to up the ante for K! :)
love the BG chipboard range too- so versatile!
products used - Sassafrass stickers, BG chipboard, OA papers, Prima flowers, KI brads, Kaiser Chipboard album
Here's an LO that encapsulates K at this moment - super cute! :) check out those chubby hands!

[crafting goodness]

Inspired by this site and too many things i've bought from them :P, i've started to do some felt crafting myself. For all my cheque books and receipt books that i carry around nowadays in my mobile office - aka my handbag....
i sewed on a handy front pocket just for those spare business cards
The cover of the chequebook with a handy slot for pens
Just completed a little LO of K using the latest products from MWL - will be putting this up in the shop next week :) Do drop by to take a look!
I love the AC stickers! They go on so easily and are a great alternative to rubons.

My new fabric that arrived yesterday! :) Sooooo happy :)
Thanks A! And for the sweet little pressie for the girls too.... it was happily received, although sadly G thought the magnet was removable :P
Here's the WIP of the train applique blankie i started yesterday...
Here's the same one completed today! :) Love the little "x"s on the bottom.... heh
new stash of ribbons!

Have a great weekend :)

[i've been pubbed!]

Heh heh.. nothing like seeing my name in print! :) So happy to be pubbed in these books / mag:
The 1st is a much awaited one - Paper trends..... It's a minibook i completed some time ago:

The next is our page in the SUPERGARDEN book for the Venice Biennale 2008. We contributed an object in Singapore's Pavilion and this is our writeup in the accompanying book :) (portrait photo by superhyperreal)
I haven't done a product review before, but as soon as i started using this punch, i knew i just had to share my experience with it!
It's the Fiskars Circle Border punch.
The review - it's a GREAT versatile machine, comes in 2 circle sizes - 6" diameter and 4" diameter. The 1st diameter is good for punching out 6" circles out of cardstock, while the smaller one's just the right size for 4R pictures! I love the easy punching with the big handle - it's a bit stiff at first, but gets much easier with each use! And the effect is really great.... I'll definately get a few more of varying patterns to use!

Here's an LO completed with G - she's very into rubons, so i let her have the remnants of the last packet of BG wholy cow. Here you can see that she's been thinking abt what to rubon, and where to do them. When she was younger, i used to have to hold onto the rubon and also cut out specifically the shape to rubon (otherwise the whole rubon sheet will be transferred!). Now, she very dexterous with the rubon tool, she's able to isolate really small rubons - like the branches and flowers, and all by herself too!
o and i love that she's also started to contribute to the journalling spots! Here's her signing off portion.
Circle punched K's picture. I adhered pp onto the Kaiser chipboard album - i love love love this album! I've also bought the "ME" book, can't wait to get started on them!
Here are the rest of the unfinished pages - pps are scenic route and october afternoon.
Some pictures of the girls:
K just loves being in the action - here's her trying to reach for her jie jie's markers
she doesn't quite know what to do with them, but look at the way she's started to mimic G holding the pencil.
Here's her trying to scribble something onto the paper
And her favorite activity now - matching shapes - if you give her 2 pencils, 2 tubs or 2 of anything of a similar shape - she does this - try to match them up with each other!
Lastly, a little card i made to accompany a stack of pics of K to my parents. :)

[little triumphs]

I had to grab my camera to take this pic - to commemorate a little triumph of G - she now brushes her teeth all by herself and this is how she looks like while doing so. Hilarious.... 

Little K is now not so little, despite the fact that she's still not taking much solid food (does anybody have a similar experience? please share, we're all starting to get slightly worried). In a rare slot of 'big sister - free' morning with K, i managed to grab these really adorable pictures....
Look at that chubby hands!
Delighted to be able to hug her sister's favorite toy.
Look at that sneaky grin..

O! and she's just begun taking her first few handsfree steps today!!! :)
This has been delivered today.

A little project with some new stuff from MWL - i love these MR mini chipboard books! So versatile and really inexpensive too! 
All the silly faces, there's actually quite a bit more
heh...
I'm interspersing these with tiny black ones plastic ones in the same shape, which i've stuck plain pps on in order to do some journalling. I'll take a pic of the completed piece when it's done!
Oops, this came out right at the end - this is how the completed embroidered photo album looks like :)

On other notes, it's always fun to read about how other crafters and fellow online bloggers juggle family, work and their craft. My favorite blogs of these fantastic working mums can be found HERE, HERE and a particularly amusing one HERE. When i read their blogs, i'm constantly amazed at how they all juggle their craft life and their mum life so effortlessly. These women are sometimes running their own business, very much like what we're doing now, except they are running them with kids in tow!

Incredible.....

[sleepless in punggol]

It's been a crazy week, rushing around on site, working on a competition dateline, producing some pitches (thanks to my parents and inlaws for the help with the girls)..... so thankful it'll be over soon! Hopefully we get to enjoy a proper weekend next weekend with the girls.

K is getting so mobile now! I'm surprised she's not walking yet, but she scoots around and climbs just about anything....
Here's how she does it:
Checking out if it's possible to climb the ledge
Climbing up and making lots of noises so that big sister G gets out of the way
Going straight up!
Looking around to see if anybody is chasing after her to get her off the ledge
Finally spotting mummy with the camera
Deciding that mummy seems like a fun target
Climbing down and it's the calm before she grabs something that i have
Looking around me for her sister
Success! mummy's camera cover is a suitable 'non-toy' toy.... sigh.
G in her cute outfit all dressed up for the lantern festival.

HAPPY LANTERN FESTIVAL! *i'm totally maxed out on all that mooncake eating.... :P

[as it were]

Somebody once said - "even though architecture is complex and full of technical issues, if there is no poetry in architecture, it will be merely construction"... It brings to mind what we're trying to do in our work, in our practice, in our general sensibilities. Also, as this blog is about my 1st and now the 2nd daughter, it is about how our work and our way of life influences their outlook and their sensibilities. Me and V have often talked about this, about how it is such that our work is so all consuming. It is not just about doing a 9-5 sort of job, it represents who we are. This is even more apparent right now, where life and work just fuses together in one big blur. Not in a bad way. I have not felt this excited about work for too long.

Our inaugral project for our firm was a little installation piece that is now opening in Venice. It is really exciting, and you can all visit it at www.supergarden.sg :) There's even a portrait of us in the book that can be downloaded.

G loves being part of our work. I still remember her when she first started speaking, she will always point to us and say - Mummy Architect, Daddy Architect, and then to herself - Baby Architect. So true! We showed her the project that we have at Venice, immediately she identified it being the stump from our apartment. Also, she listened to the recordings, and asked us - that's you! Are you talking abt your work? I love that she is so involved in all the things that we do. I love that she takes an interest in what we draw, what we design. I hope this will never change.

On other notes, i've just completed 3 very different looking, yet similar bespoke bible / album covers. I love the new fabric that has just arrived! I'm currently doing more notebook covers for a shop update soon!

[K's almost 1!]

Gosh, time really flies by for #2. She's almost 1 year old soon! As i put the invites out in the post for her coming birthday...... I still remember, this time last year, when i was 37 months and on a strict "no sugar" diet due to gestational diabetes. How the Mooncake festival was such a torture! Not to be able to indulge in my favorite mooncakes and other sinful glutinous foods. Now this year, not only am i able to do so in abundance, i've 2 really wonderful little people to raise a lantern with, share a mooncake with, introduce the joys of 'real candle' lanterns to!
Just read this, and it was SO true that i can't help but share it with you all here. I need to paste it onto my bedside table so that i'm constantly reminded of it:

On Being A Mom

By Anna Quindlen

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.

What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what they taught me was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.

I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language-mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts.

It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.